July 15, 2008

South Miami Hospital Goes Live With CliniComp’s Essentris in All Perinatal Areas

by ssavage

CliniComp Intl., a leading provider of an intelligent, reliable inpatient electronic health record and surveillance solution suite, today announced the successful deployment of its Essentris(TM) Perinatal Solution at South Miami Hospital. The 445-bed hospital is the second of three Baptist Health South Florida facilities to go live on Essentris.

Approximately 320 nurses and 160 physicians at Baptist Health are documenting on and accessing clinical information stored in Essentris from all perinatal service areas, including the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The large, not-for-profit health system is integrating the solution with Siemens Medical Solutions' Lifetime Clinical Record(R) system to standardize perinatal care documentation and provide physicians real-time access to patient data across the continuum of care.

"The successful go-live at South Miami is a critical milestone as we strive to fulfill our vision of standardizing evidence-based perinatal care to enhance quality and patient safety enterprise-wide," explains Melissa Foster Barthold, MSN, RN-BC, CPHIMS, FHIMSS, Manager, Nursing Informatics at Baptist Health South Florida. "We are two-thirds of the way toward eliminating paper-based documentation to substantially improve clinician workflow. By using Essentris to provide evidence and standards-based documentation, we also minimize variability in care and documentation and empower our nurses and physicians to make more informed decisions that will enhance care delivery."

Barthold added, "The system installation was on time and was one of the smoothest we have ever experienced for a project of its scale. Our 'super users' supporting nurses at every shift, coupled with powerful collaboration among our team of nurses, I.T. professionals and CliniComp's implementation team, significantly contributed to our success. It was a tremendous team effort."

To further streamline information flow to clinicians, South Miami interfaced Essentris with a clinical data repository that provides a longitudinal view of a patient's lifetime medical record. Charted data from the baby's delivery summary note will be transmitted from Essentris to the Siemens Lifetime Clinical Record (LCR), which physicians access via a Web portal from Siemens. CliniComp and Baptist eventually will port all data residing in Essentris to LCR, enabling the latter's parent, Baptist Health, to create a patient's lifetime record. South Miami also has integrated Essentris with several bedside monitors, ventilators and incubators in the NICU.

"The new system has been great for us because documentation now is much more accurate and timely," said Colleen Rodriguez, nurse manager of the South Miami Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. In addition, the nurse can now pull information such as vital signs or ventilator settings from the monitors without having to stop hands-on care of the patient.

"Baptist Health's strong commitment to transform clinical practice by giving clinicians instant and complete access to monitored data and the maternal and newborn chart was what drove us throughout this project. Their focus on meeting the end-user needs created a powerful synergy between our two organizations, and the results speak for themselves," said Alan Portela, Chief Operating Officer, CliniComp, Intl. "In leveraging Essentris to help create a paperless environment, Baptist Health is delivering safer, more efficient and high-quality care."

Baptist Health installed Essentris at Homestead Hospital May 2007. It will roll out the solution to more than 425 additional users at 584-bed Baptist Hospital of Miami in late fall.

Essentris Perinatal is uniquely designed to manage clinical workflow across the entire continuum of perinatal care. It provides integrated modules for fetal surveillance, maternal charting and Neonatal (level 3) ICU management. The system captures and links all episodes of care, including mother to baby information, into an electronic medical record. Essentris Perinatal is built on the award-winning Essentris platform, a multidisciplinary, hospital-wide charting and surveillance solution.

About Baptist Health South Florida

Baptist Health South Florida is the largest faith-based, not-for-profit healthcare organization in the region. Affiliates of Baptist Health include Baptist Hospital of Miami, Baptist Children's Hospital, South Miami Hospital, Homestead Hospital, Mariners Hospital, Doctors Hospital and Baptist Cardiac & Vascular Institute. Baptist Health also offers a variety of healthcare services, such as outpatient diagnostic and treatment facilities and home health. For more information, visit http://www.baptisthealth.net

About CliniComp

CliniComp is a leading provider of an intelligent, reliable inpatient electronic health record and surveillance solution suite to leading hospitals and health systems. In its nearly two-decade history, CliniComp has been a pioneer in bridging the gap between the back-office and the bedside by extending existing HIS and ancillary systems to the point of care. The Essentris enterprise solution maximizes IT investment and enforces consistent workflow across all aspects of patient care. Essentris' use of a single, interdisciplinary, electronic chart enables caregivers to easily access and view of the total clinical experience and provides a new generation of real-time clinical surveillance and analysis tools. The result is a dramatic improvement in quality and safety of patient care, outcomes and clinical decision-making. Essentris is deployed at approximately 70 client sites, including UCLA Healthcare, Baptist Health South Florida and Tenet Healthcare Corporation. CliniComp also has a sizable deployment across the Military Health System, covering more than 45 percent of all Department of Defense beds. For more information, visit www.clinicomp.com or call 800.350.8202.